Unlike the other council areas of Scotland, the name Highland is often not used as a proper noun. The council's website only sometimes refers to the area as being Highland, and other times as being the Highland Council Area or the Highlands.[2][3] Road signs on the boundary of the council area say "Welcome to the Highlands" rather than "Welcome to Highland". The council area does not cover the whole of the Scottish Highlands.

To many people within the area, using the name Highland as a noun sounds wrong. Dingwall in Highland, for example, sounds strange and is not idiomatic usage. To refer specifically to the area covered by the council, people tend to say the Highland Council area or the Highland area or the Highland region. Otherwise, they may also refer to the traditional county names, such as Ross.[citation needed]

In 1996, under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994, the Highland Regional Council and the district councils were wound up and their functions were transferred to a new Highland Council. The Highland Council adopted the districts as management areas and created area committees to represent them. However, the boundaries of committee areas ceased to be aligned exactly with those of management areas as a result of changes to ward boundaries in 1999. Ward boundaries changed again in 2007, and the management areas and related committees have now been abolished in favour of three new corporate management areas: Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross; Inverness, Nairn and Badenoch and Strathspey; and Ross, Skye and Lochaber. The names of these areas are also names of constituencies, but the boundaries are different.

The Highland Council is based in Inverness, with most previous district council offices retained as outstations.[citation needed]

The council area covers an area of 25,657 square kilometres (9,906 sq mi)[5] – which is 11.4% of the land area of Great Britain, 32.9% of the land area of Scotland and an area 20% larger than Wales.[6] The Highland and Islands division of Police Scotland also includes the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland (the former area of the Northern Constabulary) and therefore covers an area of 30,659 square kilometres (11,838 sq mi), which is larger than that of the state of Belgium.[7]

Though relatively populous for a Scottish council area, it is also sparsely populated. At 9.0 per km2 in 2012,[8] the population density is less than one seventh of Scotland's as a whole,[8] and comparable with that of Bolivia, Chad and Russia.[9][10] Historically, the area was home to a much higher percentage of Scotland's population. The rural population of the Highlands (both within and outwith the council area) declined in the late 19th century even as Scotland's grew substantially. This was due to a combination of factors that included the outlawing of the traditional Highland way of life following the Jacobite Rising of 1745, the infamous Highland Clearances and mass migration to urban areas during the Industrial Revolution. For example, the population of Skye declined from 23,082 in 1841 to 15,705 in 1891 and a low point of 7,183 in 1971, before growing in more recent decades.

Inverness is by far the largest settlement, with a population of 46,870 in 2012.[11] The urban area around Inverness includes a few outlying villages and has a population of 59,910.[12]

The highest point in the Highland council area is Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in both Scotland and the United Kingdom as a whole. Its northernmost point is Stroma, a small island in the Pentland Firth. Its southernmost point is on the Morvern peninsula. Highland contains the northernmost and westernmost points of the island of Great Britain, respectively at Dunnet Head and Corrachadh Mòr. Despite the name, not all of Highland is mountainous. The areas east of Inverness, as well as the Black Isle, eastern Sutherland, and all of Caithness are, in fact, low-lying.